Shelley Fralic: Maybe it’s time for a shame-the-bullies campaign

Shelley Fralic, Vancouver Sun columnist10.15.2012

The Internet and social media may have changed the way bullies torment their victims, but not much has changed in the last 50 years when it comes to the way we deal with perpetrators. Amanda Todd’s death should be a catalyst for change and a call to hold bullies to account.

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It was the late 1960s at David Thompson secondary in south Vancouver, where a 15-year-old girl who was still trying to figure herself out and didn’t know if she wanted to be a Hershey or a Greaser — and thus fell somewhere in between those two popular groups — arrived at school to find someone had painted a crude epithet about her on the front wall of the school, big enough to be seen from the street.

Big enough to be seen by everyone.

“Shelley sucks goats,” it read, and to this day I don’t know why the person who wrote it about me did so, or why they wanted to embarrass me, and hurt me. The principal assured me it would be removed, and it duly was. But what was missing from the incident, and the humiliating aftermath, was any notion of punishing the person who did it.

Because everyone, including me, knew who did it.

Fast forward nearly half a century, and not much has changed. The bullies are still at it, only their vitriol and cowardly hatred are more pervasive and cruel than ever, aided and abetted by the anonymity and instant communication that is social media, and new-age harassment tactics such as cyber-stalking, trolling, Tweeting and Facebook posting.

If my incident pales in comparison to the tragic suicide of bullied Port Coquitlam teen Amanda Todd a week ago, and it most certainly does, it nonetheless highlights the black hole that persists to this day when it comes to how society deals with bullying and, more importantly, with bullies.

Which is to say that the torturers, the boys and girls and men and women who fire their atrocious and wounding volleys at those they deem most vulnerable, always seem to get a pass, always seem to avoid accountability and consequence.

Today, all over this country, we are desperately trying to comprehend how humans can be so cruel to one another, how teenagers can find it within themselves to be so evil, so inhumane that they would intentionally and, some say, with twisted glee, drive a lovely 15-year-old girl to see that the only way to end the daily torture at the hands of her bullies was to take her own life.

Who bullied Amanda Todd? I’d like to know their names. I’d like to see their photographs in the newspapers and on television and the Internet, and hear what they have to say for themselves.

I’d like them to stand up in the court of public opinion and have the courage of their odious convictions, instead of being cowardly in the wake of their deadly action.

No one, not even on the Internet, is truly anonymous. And certainly not in the schoolyard, or the hockey rink, or the high school hallway, where someone — where, likely, everyone — knows who these bullies are.

They know them because bullies are proud of what they do. They don’t hide it. They revel in it. And they do so because they not only harbour no remorse, but are fully aware that they can get away with their bullying, that there are few repercussions beyond a stern talking to by a teacher or a parent.

Many bullies are shielded by their friends, who are afraid to speak up or who are equally uncaring. They are shielded, too, by parents who, when confronted, simply deny their child could do such a thing or, in tacit acknowledgment, shrug and point the finger at the victim, invoking that age-old adage that “your kid needs to toughen up.”

Meanwhile, feeling helpless, we leave it to the authorities to do their job, even while knowing the police and schools and doctors and youth advocates are often shackled by impotent laws and privacy concerns.

And, yes, we should do all these things — investigating, educating, providing support — but surely we also need to be talking about zero tolerance, and full disclosure, and justice not only being done but being seen to be done.

It’s not about vigilantism, or tarring and feathering, though that notion is tempting, or even shaming the culprits in a set of stocks in the town square, though there is poetic justice in that idea, too.

We don’t need to march on the front lawns of the bullies with burning torches, but we do need to publicly identify the perpetrators and, if required, expel them from school or their job or their team.

And if their parents are part of the problem, we need to shame them, too.

We need accountability. We need consequence.

This is not just about holding a mirror up to modern society and being repulsed by the reflection. It’s about doing the right thing so that the Amanda Todds of the world can live to see their 16th birthdays.

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